Donne

1
Donnes Poetry

• ENGL 203
• Dr. Fike

2
Metaphysical Poetry

• Harmon and Holman
• psychological analysis of the emotions of love
  and religion
• penchant for the novel and the shocking
• use of the metaphysical conceit
• the extremes to which they metaphysical poets
  sometimes carried their techniques

3
Further Characteristics

• 1 Linkage of opposites (wit fancy
  inspiration originality imagination
  antithesis paradox)
• Eliot quoting Jonson the most heterogeneous
  ideas are yoked by violence together
• Coleridges point far-fetched comparisons (next
  )

4
Coleridge on Opposites

• With Donne whose muse on dromedary trots
• Wreathe iron pokers into true love knots
• Rhymes sturdy cripple fancys maze and clue
• Wits forge and fire-blast meanings press and
  screw.

5
Example of Linkage of Opposites

• Batter my heart sonnet (10)
• Questions
• What comparisons is Donne making
• What is the effect of the phrase Three-persond
  God
• What paradoxes do you find in the poem
• How do you read the final line
• Form What is the rhyme scheme here Do you
  find any exceptions to iambic pentameter

6
Interpretation

• God as lamb vs. God as ram a kind of violence
  in Christian doctrine
• Seige speakers heart is a gate
• Trinity triple strength
• Father break instead of knock
• Holy Spirit blow instead of breathe
• Son (Sun) burn instead of shine
• Paradoxes
• Wrestler must fall to rise.
• Speaker must be imprisoned to be free.
• Speaker must be ravished to be chaste.

7
Factoid

• This was Robert Oppenheimers favorite poem.
• The first nuclear test was code named Trinity.
• Break blow and burn like a nuclear weapon.

8
Further Characteristics

• 2 Often irregular meter or rhyme scheme.
• 3 Different voicesa metaphysical poem is a
  dramatic event (the poet though is not the
  persona/speaker). The Flea is a terrific
  example of unfolding drama.
• 4 The poems are anti-Petrarchan interest in
  what was novel and shocking images drawn from
  everyday life (not idealized life).

9
2 Irregular Meter and Rhyme

• When I do count the clock that tells the time
• What guile is this that these her golden tresses
• She doth disguise under a net of gold.
• I wonder by my troth what thou and I
• Did till we lovd were we not weand till then
• Questions
• Which lines are from Donne
• How do you scan the lines

10
Scansion

• When I do count the clock that tells the time
• --Shakespeare Sonnet 12
• What guile is this that these her golden tresses
• She doth disguise under a net of gold.
• --Spenser Amoretti
• I wonder by my troth what thou and I
• Did till we lovd were we not weand till then
• --Donne The Good Morrow
• POINT Smooth and regular metrics
  (musical-sounding) vs. the likeness of a
  passionate conversation.

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4 Anti-Petrarchan

• Petrarchan
• Woman as goddess figure
• Chaste love
• Elaborate description of ideal beauty
• Anti-Petrarchan
• Consummated love
• Interest in the novel and the shocking
• Imagery drawn from everyday life
• Unconventional imagery

12
Further Characteristics

• 5 Metaphysical conceits extended metaphors
• Eliot a device which is sometimes considered
  characteristically metaphysical the
  elaboration (contrasted with the condensation) of
  a figure of speech to the furthest stage to which
  ingenuity can carry it (The Metaphysical
  Poets)
• Harmon and Holman A highly ingenious kind of
  conceit widely used by metaphysical poets who
  explored all areas of knowledge to find in the
  startlingly esoteric or the shockingly
  commonplace telling and unusual analogies for
  their ideas.

13
Conceit

• Sometimes grotesque or absurd.
• Goal To portray the world in a way that we have
  not thought of before.

14
Best Example of a Conceit

• A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
• What is the conceit here
• How do you paraphrase stanzas 3-5
• 3
• 4
• 5

15
Paraphrase

• How do you paraphrase stanzas 3-5
• 3 Natural disasters can kill you but the
  motions of the spheres will not hurt you.
• 4 Earthly love is compromised by the absence of
  the body.
• 5 A higher love endures despite the absence of
  earthly fleshits lack of physical proximity.

16
Characteristics of Donnes Poetry

• 1 He sees the world in small things and man
  is a microcosm
• The Good Morrow
• The Sun Rising

17
The Good Morrow

• 11 And makes one little room an every where.
• 17-18 Where can we find two better hemispheres
  / Without sharp north without declining west
• Hemisphere a symbol of perfection
• POINT Donne likes to see the world in small
  things.

18
The Good Morrow

• The poems organization
• Stanza 1 The pastlust vs. love emphasis on
  the flesh (pleasures beauty)
• Stanza 2 The presentfear vs. trust emphasis
  on the mind (waking souls)
• Stanza 3 The futureinconstancy vs. fidelity
  emphasis on the spirit (westdeath true love
  cannot die)

19
looking babies

• Seeing each other in the eyes looking babies
  as the English called it in the 16th and 17th
  centuries.
• Line 15 My face in thine eye thine in mine
  appears

20
The Four Humours

• Line 19 Whatever dies was not mixed equally
• Blood (hot and moist)cheerfulness warmth of
  feeling
• Choler (hot and dry)a quick angry temper
• Phlegm (cold and moist)dull sluggishness
• Melancholy (cold and dry)fretful depression
• --Source the glossary in your anthology

21
Another Example of Seeing the World in Small
Things

• The Sun Rising
• Sun leave us alonelet us love. Go mess with
  others. Love is timeless.
• Our love could eclipse you sun. The world
  centers on our bed.
• We are all states and all princes. We are
  greater and richer than them all. We are
  central
• the worlds contracted thus
• This bed thy centre is

22
Characteristics of Donnes Poetry

• 2 Fascination with death.
• Best example Death be not proud
• The inevitability of physical death
• Death depends on the stuff in line 9ff. fate
  chance kings and desperate men etc.
• But faith in the souls immortality
• Belief that souls sleep until the Last Judgment
• Then Death itself will die.

23
More on Fascination with Death

• Emphasis on the Last Judgment
• Example Sonnet 4
• Octave Judgment Day the end of the world
  Donne imagines souls reanimating their bodies.
• Sestet Let the dead sleep awhile longer so that
  the speaker a sinner will have time to repent.
• Note how the Italian sonnet structure reinforces
  the turn at line 9.

24
Characteristics of Donnes Poetry

• 3 Sacred elements in secular love poems (and
  the reverse).
• Physical and spiritual love are bound up
  together.

25
Best example of 3 The Relic

• Contraries It is a love poem but the context
  involves digging up the corpses of two lovers!
• The grave digger will leave their bodies alone
  because he will assume that the lovers will be
  reunited at the Resurrection. They might even
  mess around a little in the grave.
• If they are dug up in a time of false religious
  practices as the note puts it people may
  mistake their bones for relics and use them to
  perform miracles.
• Hey these lovers were pretty miraculous in life
  as well!

26
More on The Relic

• Blasphemy
• A something else Christ
• A mixture of the sacred (relics) and the secular
  (earthly love).
• A mixture of the solemn (graveyard) and the
  playful.

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The Point of Characteristic 3

• This is NOT the Platonic ladder of love that we
  discussed in connection with Sidney. In Donne
  the physical and the spiritual are mingled.
• The blending of sacred and secular elements
  signals full participation in the human
  condition.
• It is hard to separate the love poems from the
  religious ones
• The love poems (The Relic) have sacred elements
  in them (relics miracles).
• And the religious poems (Sonnet 10) contain
  secular material (battle wrestling rape).
• There is not hard-and-fast distinction between
  Jack the Rake and Dr. Donne this is a false
  dichotomy.
• Instead there is a dynamic tension between
  Donnes worldliness and his religious devotion.

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Categories of Poems

• Idealistic The Good Morrow The Sun Rising
  The Ecstasy The Canonization
• Cynical The Flea Womans Constancy The
  Indifferent
• Valedictory A Valediction Forbidding
  Mourning A Valediction Of Weeping
• Neither cynical nor idealistic The Relic
  The Undertaking The Blossome

29
Activity

• Lets read The Flea one stanza at a time and
  you can comment on what you discover there.

30
Another Example of 3

• The Flea
• It was common in poetry to have a flea walk the
  womans body and go where the lover wants to go.
• See the note Donnes treatment making the
  flea a symbol of the desired union of his and his
  mistresss blood is original.

31
Points About The Flea

• Donne sees the world in small things
• something small (a flea) encompasses the whole
  of their love. This flea is you and I (line
  12).
• Linkage of opposites The flea is associated
  with love and seduction.

32
Summary of The Flea

• Stanza 1 If the lovers blood is mingled in the
  flea then copulation the speaker implies is
  not such a big dealthey are already joined in
  the flea. Look what the flea has done and compare
  it with what you deny me! (Note the visual pun
  s looked like f in Donnes day. The word
  suck then becomes.)
• Stanza 2 Dont harm the flea! Since it is you
  and I killing it is three sins in one murder
  (pun to die to have an orgasm) self murder
  (pun on masturbation) and sacrilege.
• Stanza 3 Well whadya know You killed the
  flea and we didnt die! Your fears were false!
  Therefore there is little risk in going to bed
  with me. END